Topic “Oded Bashan”

In the first full year since a takeover ousted former CEO and co-founder Oded Bashan, Israel-based NFC and contactless company On Track Innovations showed some progress in its efforts to turn around the chronically unprofitable company, in part by focusing on sales of contactless point-of-sale terminals.

Facing growing pressure from a dissident shareholders group, Oded Bashan has submitted his resignation as chairman of Israel-based contactless and NFC vendor On Track Innovations, a company he co-founded 22 years ago.

Two members of the board of Israel-based On Track Innovations have resigned, following pressure from dissident shareholders seeking to capture control of the board of the financially struggling contactless and NFC supplier.

The second-largest shareholder of Israel-based contactless and NFC vendor On Track Innovations is keeping up the pressure as he and his allies wage a battle for control of the company against its board and co-founder, Oded Bashan.

HEADLINE NEWS

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Following a lull in attention on host-card emulation with the announcement and launch of Apple Pay in the latter half of last year, the buzz appears to be back on HCE, and among the latest organizations promoting it is MasterCard Worldwide.

NFC Times Exclusive – MasterCard Worldwide and EMVCo are working on a “payment identifier” that could cover all tokens for a particular card account issued to consumers, according to the payment network.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight– Contactless payments in Europe, almost exclusively from cards, increased by more than 170% in the fourth quarter of 2014, MasterCard Europe has announced, and the payment network cited NFC payments projects in Europe as a positive sign, while promoting the prospect for host-card emulation-based launches.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Samsung Electronics has signed an agreement to acquire mobile-payments start-up LoopPay, setting up a battle between Apple and Samsung in the U.S. over rival mobile-payments platforms, while raising the prospect for more fragmentation in the U.S.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Israel-based contactless reader and NFC company On Track Innovations Tuesday announced the resignation of CEO Ofer Tziperman after less than two years on the job, with observers chalking up the exit to insufficient progress Tziperman has made in turning around the company’s finances and its low share price since a board takeover by dissident shareholders in late 2012.

NFC Times Exclusive – The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has issued a request for proposal with plans to launch an NFC pilot this year followed later by a rollout, putting the authority’s Mifare-based fare-collection application mainly on Android NFC phones.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Visa today announced that other leading device manufacturers besides Apple would begin deploying its Visa Token Service this year, to “deliver secure mobile payments through their phones, tablets and other connected devices.”

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Dutch bank Rabobank has launched an NFC-enabled mobile wallet, storing a debit application on embedded secure elements in two older Samsung Android devices, which the bank claims is the first NFC mobile payments launch in the country.

NFC Times Exclusive –U.S.-based white-label mobile payments and commerce vendor Mozido told NFC Times it is seeing significant interest in host-card emulation among prospective customers, though did not release any details on service providers considering the technology.

Sales in NXP Semiconductor’s emerging ID business, which mainly includes its NFC chips, soared in the fourth quarter, growing by more than 200%, compared with the same period a year earlier, thanks mainly to the roll out of Apple Pay.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Broadcom made only passing reference to NFC during a conference call Thursday to discuss the company’s fourth quarter and full-year earnings, although CEO Scott McGregor listed NFC as one of the technologies expected to help lead to growth in the company’s high-end connectivity business.